IDF says it killed Hamas de facto PM – Sinwar’s right-hand man – in strike 3 months ago
Military says Rawhi Mushtaha was killed along with top officials Sameh al-Siraj and Sami Odeh in a strike on a fortified underground compound for Hamas leaders
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent

Senior Hamas official Rawhi Mushtaha, the de facto prime minister of the Gaza Strip, was killed in an Israeli strike several months ago, the IDF and Shin Bet said Thursday, announcing that they had confirmed his death.
The IDF described Mushtaha as Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s “right-hand man and one of his closest associates.” He was a long-time cellmate of Sinwar’s in Israeli prison, was freed with Sinwar in the 2011 Shalit deal, and was one of the five key architects of the October 7 Hamas invasion and slaughter in southern Israel.
According to the military and Shin Bet, Mushtaha was targeted in a strike in the Gaza Strip three months ago, along with Hamas officials Sameh al-Siraj, who held the security portfolio in Hamas’s political bureau, and Sami Odeh, the head of Hamas’s “general security mechanism.”
The strike, carried out by fighter jets, targeted the officials while they were hiding in a tunnel in the northern Gaza Strip. The IDF says it had “precise intelligence” indicating the officials were in the tunnel.
But until now, they had not been able to confirm that they were killed.
The military described the tunnel as “a fortified and equipped underground compound” that “served as a Hamas command and control center and enabled senior operatives to remain inside of it for extended periods of time.”

Hamas has not confirmed the deaths of the senior officials. The IDF said that Hamas is hiding its losses “to prevent loss of morale and functioning of its terror operatives.”
Mushtaha and Sinwar served a prison sentence together in an Israeli jail, and later together established Hamas’s general security mechanism, according to the IDF.
“Mushtaha was considered to be the most senior figure in the Hamas political bureau in the Gaza Strip, and during the war maintained civil control of the Hamas regime, while simultaneously engaging in terror activity against Israel,” the military said.
The IDF says he was also “one of Hamas’s most senior operatives, and had a direct impact on decisions relating to Hamas’s force deployment.”
“Mushtaha was involved in military decisions while also acting as the head of Hamas civil governance in the Gaza Strip and holding the prisoners affairs portfolio. He also formerly held the finance portfolio,” the military added.

Israel launched an assault on Hamas in the Gaza Strip following the October 7th massacre, when some 3,000 terrorists breached the border and killed some 1,200 people, most of them civilians.
Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas and return the hostages has seen the military target many of Hamas’s leaders including the shadowy head of their military wing Muhammad Deif and Rafa’a Salameh, the commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade, in a strike in July.

Deif’s deputy, Marwan Issa, was killed in an airstrike in March.
Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated, allegedly by Israel, in Tehran in late July, and the terror group’s deputy political leader, Salah al-Arouri, was killed by Israel in an airstrike in Lebanon’s capital Beirut in January.
Hamas leader Sinwar has been incommunicado for a relatively long time, and Israel has been investigating the possibility — currently unlikely speculation not backed by any hard evidence — that he is dead.
More than half of Hamas’s military wing leadership in Gaza has been confirmed killed by the IDF so far amid the fighting.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 40,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.
Israel says it has killed more than 17,000 combatants in battle and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7. Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.